Mercedes to consider ’team orders’ after Monza

Toto Wolff says Mercedes may soon need to consider imposing ’team orders’.

Lewis Hamilton is still leading the world championship, but the Mercedes driver ended the weekend at Spa wondering if Ferrari has a "trick" engine.

Wolff played that down, saying he has "complete trust" in the FIA to enforce the technical rules.

But it now seems clear that Ferrari’s is obviously the faster, with Sebastian Vettel having won the Belgian GP and closed the gap to 17 points.

So it could be that Valtteri Bottas is asked to step in and support Hamilton’s quest for the championship.

"I absolutely don’t like it and it completely contradicts my racing instincts," team boss Wolff said.

"We have always tried to stay neutral and have an equal approach to the drivers," he added. "We have never discussed or used team orders.

"But we’ll see how everything turns out in Monza and then decide whether to concentrate on one driver. But at the moment we haven’t interfered in the fight between our drivers on the track," Wolff said.

As for whether Mercedes now needs to add some "tricks" to its own 2018 engine, he answered: "We are not doing tricks, we are innovating.

"I think at Spa we made a significant step forward and we will continue to do that. This will be a development race that determines whether we win or lose the championship," Wolff admitted.